Twenty Kisses
by ThunderheadFred
Summary: Archived drabbles from reader requests on the theme of kisses. Multiple pairings from my main fics, along with a few surprises. Full index of pairings and prompts precedes first chapter for easy navigation. [Pairings:fShep/Garrus, fShep/Mordin, Hannah S./OC, Sara/Kallo, and more on the way!]
1. 1 - Hannah and Albacus

Elements of these prompts may wind up getting reworked in my main fics, but for now, it's safe to consider them drabbles and loose explorations of my head-canons.

 ** _Some of these drabbles contain spoilers for the following stories:  
_** _Red Streak / A Pretty Taste For Paradox / In The Yellow Time Of Pollen_ _  
_ ** _Proceed with awareness._**

Index sorted by fic canon and pairing.  
( **Bold** = posted. Prompts will be filled in the order they were received)

 _ **Red Streak**_

Hannah Shepard/Albacus Regidonis  
- **01.** _when one person's face is scrunched up..._ (major fic spoilers / 0.5k / G)  
- **02.** _throwing their arms around the other person..._ (major fic spoilers / 1.2k / M)  
-03. _hands on the other person's back, fingertips pressing under their top..._  
-04. _lazy morning kisses before they've even opened their eyes..._  
-05. _a hoarse whisper "kiss me"..._

Jane Shepard/Garrus Vakarian  
- **06.** _breaking the kiss to say something..._ (fic spoilers / 1.2k / M)  
- **07.** _a gentle "I love you" whispered after a soft kiss...  
_ -08. _moving around while kissing, stumbling over things..._

Ashley Williams/Nihlus Kryik  
-09. _one small kiss, pulling away for an instant..._  
-10. _when one stops the kiss to whisper..._

Jane Shepard+Albacus Regidonis  
-11. height difference kisses...  
-12. one person is sitting in the other's lap...

 _ **Other Pairings**_

Grace Shepard/Mordin Solus (A Pretty Taste For Paradox)  
- **13.** _routine kisses..._ (0.7k / G)  
- **14.** _kisses meant to distract..._ (1.8k / G)  
-15. _being unable to open their eyes for a few moments afterward..._  
-16. _top of head kisses..._

Sara Ryder/Kallo Jath (In The Yellow Time of Pollen)  
- **17.** _starting with a kiss meant to be gentle... (1.8k / M)_

Jack/Miranda  
-18. _kissing so desperately..._

ME3 NPCs, female human/male salarian  
-19. _staring at the other's lips..._

Javik/Liara  
-20. _following the kiss with a series of kisses down the neck..._

* * *

 **Hannah and Albacus**  
 _when one person's face is scrunched up, and the other one kisses their lips/nose/forehead_

(for ofthe14thchakra)

* * *

"You're making that face again."

Albacus didn't look up from his desk, but Hannah could see the expression perfectly well in her mind's eye. The look he always adopted when fighting with Cortez's mess of ledgers: fierce and fed-up in equal parts.

"What face?" he spat, shuffling datapads. "There is no _face."_

Hannah grunted, injecting as much sarcasm into the noise as she could manage.

If Albacus wanted to scowl through his latest mountain of spreadsheets, so be it. It was hard for anybody to do this kind of accounting with a smile on their face. For a turian with a military pedigree and no practical business knowledge whatsoever, the task was uniquely thankless.

The spaceport's numbers were always too tight, resources always too thin. Cortez' crew was loyal, but the man knew how to manage people, not credits. Hannah had made progress on his books, and Albacus did what he could to assist, but when it came to penny pinching, the disgraced starship Captain was easy to frustrate.

Defeated at last, Albacus rubbed his eyes and threw three separate data pads into three separate piles.

He leaned back in his creaking chair and jumped: she'd silently closed in on him. She was inches away, close enough to land a sudden sneak attack. A rough kiss to one glowering brow plate, which he swatted away with a sigh, acknowledging he had been beaten.

Taking a step back, she grunted at him again to hide a snort of laughter.

"Yep, you're definitely making the face."

"What about you?" he said, gesturing to her crossed arms, the know-it-all jut of her hip. "You loom above me in perfect judgment, making that _noise."_

"My God-given right."

She freed her left hand and waggled her fingers, allowing the glint of her wedding band do the sarcastic winking on her behalf.

He rolled his eyes, a bratty attitude he'd picked up from Jane, who had picked it up from Cortez' youngest, who had picked it up from who knows where. Ignoring Hannah completely, Albacus hefted another datapad and pretended to resume the dull and never-ending chore of turning a profit on Mindoir.

His face - forever turian and untranslatable - nonetheless had a familiar old-world sculpt to it. Smart and dour, a librarian peering over his spectacles. She waited for the dutiful sigh.

 _There it was._

Her chest flared with warmth, pulse humming with affection. Her limbs filled with the new ache she'd learned to associate with Albacus: those hungry moments when he was out of arm's reach and being an admirable bore.

She moved to his back and draped herself around him with oozing stubbornness, then noticed that his datapad was blank. Tricky.

Another sigh, even more dutiful than the first.

"Quite busy here, no time for meaningless distractions."

She pressed her lips into his sensitive neck.

"Like this one, for instance."

He tossed away the datapad and pulled her onto the desk instead.


	2. 2 - Hannah and Albacus

**Hannah and Albacus**  
 _throwing their arms around the other person, holding them close while they kiss_

(for wafflesrock16)

* * *

Several minutes into a breathless silence of his own making, Albacus was still staring at a hand with too many fingers, willing it to move. Demanding any one of the five digits to twitch. Exactly as before, irrespective of hours of concentrated effort, nothing happened.

He sat alone. A few moments unobserved while Hannah made another attempt to coax Jane to sleep. He could hear Hannah's parental strategies countered with ease and practice, met with the bottomless resolve of a child who had survived starvation, disease, and the clash of several warring fleets all before her fourth birthday.

The nightly struggle was identical. Each night, Jane would fight her mother for every spare second of consciousness. Each night the child would whine and wheedle and wail. And each night, without exception, Hannah would win.

Albacus smiled.

In an effort to refocus, he tried to channel Jane's relentless stubbornness toward his own impossible task. He looked back to the accursed prosthesis. It lay limp beside his knee, cold and useless.

After a moment of painful quiet, two taped-together fingers jerked in tandem. It was his most impressive success of the evening. To celebrate, he allowed himself a deep inhale. As he sagged into the couch and closed his eyes, he felt an ache in his chest that was only partially to blame on holding his breath.

The arm was no more a part of Albacus' body than the block of dull knives in the kitchen or the rust-speckled wrenches on Hannah's workbench. Cheap, crude devices that had been designed for lives other than his. The only tools at his disposal, and all poor fits.

Albacus might be frustrated, but he was not ungrateful. He would learn to make the most of what he had been given, which was rough by any standard. His new arm had been styled on the cheap with modular field applications and human beings in mind. Steel shafts and oiled bearings in place of bones and joints. Instead of skin and plates, a flexible sleeve of black mesh that barely covered the raw components of the prosthesis. It reminded him of scraps of quarian tech he had encountered, which was to say: improvised.

The process of adjustment would be long. The veterinarian-turned-surgeon had warned Albacus of that, both with words and with the fearful look of inexperience in his eye. It would be weeks before custom retrofits could be fabricated, and months before Albacus learned to control the arm in full. Perhaps longer. Perhaps never.

Interfacing a turian amputee with human-specced parts had presented a complete unknown. The doctor had lengthened the prosthetic arm as far as the prefab assemblage would allow, but it was still short by an unsettling margin. Hannah had taped the fingers together in an effort to make Albacus feel more comfortable, but the result was that the hand looked mangled and swollen, and no closer to turian.

Worst by far, he could still feel every inch of his old arm as if it were alive and on fire. Nerves crying out for connections that would never again be whole, like bones crumbling inside his skin. He would give almost anything to be able to scratch a blinding itch on the inside of an elbow that no longer existed.

The living room door hissed quietly, startling him, but it was only Hannah emerging from the now-silent sleeping quarters.

He cracked open one curious eye, stifling the nerve pain as best he could. Before he could say a word, she held a finger to her mouth and widened her eyes dangerously.

Ah. Jane, finally asleep. He must not wake the beast.

He held out his good hand and silently waved her closer. Once she was in whispering range, she jumped right on the bruise.

"Any progress?" she asked, gesturing to the prosthetic arm.

"Some," he admitted, keeping his voice low and flat.

She was quiet, too still. She was watching him for signs. To distract her, he grabbed her hand and brought it to his face, rubbing the smooth skin of the back of her knuckles across his mandible.

"Everything alright?" she whispered, refusing to be fooled.

"Everything…"

He realized he had inadequate words only after opening his mouth. Without finishing the thought, he yanked her closer and pressed his head into her stomach, inhaling the warm white scent of her nighshirt.

Her arms wrapped around him, soft hands sliding against the sensitive inner lining of his cowl. Her fingers kneaded deliberately against the now-familiar knots in his neck, and he rolled his head back and forth to give her better access. A moment of doubt, then he felt her hands adventuring into his fringe.

Using careful scrapes, she outlined the tip of each segment, tracing his _notas_ and pulling a low groan out of his throat. Wanting more, he wrapped his good arm around her waist and pulled her down into his lap.

The strong curves of her body settled heavily against him, pressing him further into the couch, her weight and heat instantly rekindling the spark that constantly lived in his chest, waiting for her. His hand wandered across the welcome thickness of her hips and thighs, then crept impatiently beneath her shirt.

"I want to feel your arms around me, Alba."

Rising to her knees, she slowed the forward roll of her hips. With deliberation and care, touching with fingertips only, she met his eyes and reached for the prosthetic arm.

He stared at the device hanging from his shoulder and eventually shook his head.

He reminded her: "Not my arm. Not anymore."

Her face tightened with wounded comprehension. He sighed, heart surging, not wanting to explain. He squeezed her thigh with his good hand, cherishing the living warmth in his palm, and wished for sufficient words. Before he could find them, she removed the need.

She pulled her nightshirt over her head. Leaning back on his lap to catch the meager light of the room, she bared herself for him completely.

Hard muscular planes shifted beneath pale skin seething with freckles. The alien but erotic swell of her breasts quivered in the new cold, and there... the jagged red lines of her numerous scars stood out like a web of lightning. He moved his good hand to cover the wide mark between her breasts, repeating the same reverent kiss of fingertips he always paid to these darkened inches of her that did not survive unscathed.

He traced Hannah's chest and felt her heart thudding beneath his hand. A wary smile crept across his face.

Every night, without exception, Hannah would win.

He looked towards her hand, the one that still rested on his prosthetic arm, and conceded.

She tightened her grip. Gently, she lifted the strange black limb to cover the swell of her thigh, arranging it carefully, her fingers running delicate patterns over the tangle of electronics and mesh. He watched in silence. Allowing it, but feeling nothing. Looking at Hannah's darkening eyes, the charged red flush of her skin, he understood how foolish it would be to waste this moment mourning a loss.

He wrapped the flesh and bones of his living arm around her waist to drag her down for a kiss. She caught his eyes, her smile wide and easy, then resisted him with all her strength. To capture her, he was forced to flex until his good arm burned with strain, a slow torture that set his entire body on fire. The weight of her hips, the scrape of her nails across his plates, all of her: commanding his blood. He felt a surge on his left side, Hannah gasped, and both of them stared at the prosthesis.

For the first time, he recognized something of himself in that alien hand. The fingers were dug into the flesh of Hannah's hip, begging for her mercy.

Hannah's smile cracked open like an egg, bathing him with a rich golden warmth. She flooded into him. Her kiss was a thrilled pause, a bated breath waiting for his answer. With a rush of teeth and tongue, he opened his mouth and met her breathless daring with all of his own.


	3. 6 - Jane and Garrus

**Jane and Garrus  
** _breaking the kiss to say something, staying so close that you're murmuring into each other's mouths_

(for ejunkiet)

* * *

The _Normandy_ kit was a rushed knock-off, cobbled together by drooling entrepreneurs who were hungry to make a quick couple of credits. Several details were laughably off the mark: the proportion of the wingspan, the placement of the IES vents, the width of her stripes. None of it to spec, but Garrus had to admit that for a rush job, it was almost too close for comfort.

It was the thought that counted. _Normandy_ was already important enough to merit an adoring if inaccurate grey-market replica on her maiden voyage. Garrus Vakarian was important enough to said maiden voyage that his own mother had mailed a _Normandy_ model kit to his apartment while he'd been off gallivanting through the universe, chasing the tail of Shepard's comet.

Garrus _had_ been important enough, yesterday. Now he was nobody. Again.

He'd discovered the kit in the middle of the night while stumbling across the threshold of his Citadel apartment for the first time in weeks. Trying to wipe Shepard out his brain had required alcohol of a strength and purity usually administered to gushing wounds in field hospitals. Too angry to see in a straight line, he'd caught a glimpse of the _Normandy's_ familiar curves, taken her reappearance for an elaborately cruel prank, and thrown the box across the room before passing out on the couch.

Upon waking in a mess of his own sweat and drool, details were fuzzy. Had Shepard kicked him off the ship, or had Garrus volunteered to resign? He remembered a lot of yelling, and the look on her face when the silence had finally set in, but not much more. Only one detail remained: she'd left with Nihlus.

Sulking around his apartment all through the gray morning, digging in dusty cabinets for any food that hadn't expired, Garrus rediscovered the crumpled _Normandy_ kit. It was cowering in the corner behind a newly shattered 1:100 model of the _Rhapsodon,_ along with an omni-tool code that triggered a personalized holographic message from his mother.

How proud she was, though she wished Garrus had talked to her first. How scatterbrained Garrus was, for not setting up a forwarding system so she could contact him while he was away. How much Garrus owed her a call.

He couldn't bring himself to call _Mari_. Not now. The least he could do was cobble together the gift she'd sent, maybe send her a snap of a wannabe _Normandy_ assembled and sitting on his shelf next to the _Kara… or the PFS Tenefalx._

The unguarded thought made him flinch, and he stared at his old stock model of the Blackwatch legend for a long time after that, as if hoping he could force it to confess or explode or both. It looked like the _Normandy's_ homely sister _._ Boxier and larger by half, primitive in comparison, but an undeniable relative.

Garrus rudely shoved the thought aside and managed to get one wing attached to the _Normandy_ when the first knock arrived.

He froze and considered not answering. It was probably his father. Almost certainly his father.

How disappointed he was, because he wished Garrus had talked to him first. How stupid Garrus was, for dropping C-Sec like a hot rock and running after the Spectres again. How much Garrus owed him an explanation.

Another knock. Followed immediately by two more.

"Fine!" Garrus barked, setting the fake _Normandy_ on his desk in a pile of detritus where it belonged. "I get it!"

He picked up the sloshing, mostly-empty bottle of _horosk_ and brought it with him to the door, hoping to discourage a long visit. Artfully embellishing his own shame had always been a sure-fire tactic for getting his father to give up on him faster. Look at me _Pari,_ I'm a washed up waste of a cop _and_ a drunk. Leave me alone.

"Get it over with," he said, palming open the lock. "I know. I should have stayed—"

The words died in his mouth.

It was Shepard.

No. Not Shepard. Standing in his doorway was someone almost completely unrecognizable. Sloppy makeup and a crooked leather jacket Garrus had never seen before. An ill-fitting combination of military blues and casual wear that made her look like a crude mash-up of Alliance Marine and duct rat.

"Jane?"

The name was little more than a bruising wheeze.

She nodded, staring at his knees. Jaw clenched, fists clenched, everything clenched. She'd come to finish the fight.

He keeled forward to laugh in her face, welcoming her into his apartment with a crooked sweep of his liquor bottle. She didn't move.

He recognized that look. It was the same one she'd leveled at him last night, the same one she'd leveled at him the First Night, when she'd abandoned him in his squad car. No warning, no reason, just walked out of his life forever.

Except it hadn't been forever. Not quite.

"Hit me while I'm down," he jeered. "C'mon. I'm ready for it. Are you here with severance pay? What?"

She yanked the bottle from his hand.

"That'll make you sick."

He quoted their first encounter on reflex, ashamed even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, reeling at his persistent sun-blindness. Shepard had never been a girl in a bar. He wished he'd known that from day one.

"Shut up," she said, uncorking the bottle to take a deep swallow.

He watched the mechanism of her throat as she finished the last inches of turian liquor. As if she was born to it.

She was, he remembered. In her way.

She pushed the empty bottle into his chest, and he tossed it onto the carpet with a pathetic muffled thud.

"That was my last drop," he whined.

"Good."

Then she was on him.

Her lips were cold, maybe from the liquor, maybe from wandering the wards alone. In startling contrast, the inside of her mouth was hot and sure, so forceful that he staggered and almost lost his footing.

"What—" he attempted, but that was all he managed. She grabbed the sides of his face and pressed in tighter, silencing him with her tongue. Bodies flush, he could feel the gyration of her hips swelling toward him like some ancient curse from the sea.

"No talking," she warned, talking.

He pushed back, tangling all of his fingers into her hair until his hands were nothing but knots.

"I like talking," he growled, biting down on her lower lip until she swore. "Apparently it's the only thing I'm good at."

Her breath painted his face in sour, sloppy bursts, remnants of the bottom of the bottle they'd shared. She was strong, too strong, and he was suddenly shoved onto his own couch, unable to defend himself even if he'd wanted to.

Luckily, he didn't.

"Shut up," she repeated. Her teeth traced his throat, his keel, his waist, the traitorous wasteland of his groin, and she did her best to undo him all over again. "Just shut up."


	4. 7 - Jane and Garrus

Please note, this drabble contains major character death and a huge dose of angst. Though I wrote this because of the kiss prompt, I fully intend to eventually recycle this scene for use in Midnight Blue (the sequel to Red Streak). So just be aware, this is kind of the worst sneak-preview ever. Anyway, enjoy the spoilers! :D

* * *

 **Jane and Garrus  
** _a gentle "I love you" whispered after a soft kiss, followed immediately by a stronger kiss_  
(for wafflesrock16, with my sincerest apologies)

* * *

When Sovereign went down, Kithoi got the worst of it. Debris and ejecta carved a mile-wide diagonal swath across the ward arm, and the resulting ruin was indiscriminate. Offices, apartments, nightclubs, schools - all blasted to rubble. Some structures had been halved so cleanly that they stood in the middle of empty blocks like slices of many-layered desserts melting on their plates.

Days after the disaster, chunks of undead Reaper still sizzled, peppered unpredictably throughout the path of destruction. Wherever they landed, there they stayed, untouched by even the boldest black market tech scrappers. Far from inert, Soverign's fallen body parts coughed caustic plumes of purple smoke and spat deadly rains of sparks at anyone who tried to get too close. Spec-Ops crews had been dispatched to sweep the ward clean of the dangerous Reaper leftovers, but countless scattered tons of rubble made the task painstakingly slow. Large-scale containment procedures always took time, and this clean-up had stretched official resources to the breaking point. The recovery teams were forced to pass over non-critical wreckage, leaving it to be picked over by scavengers or rot where it lay.

Unable to think of anything else to do with himself, Garrus wandered into one of the ramshackle civilian support squads. Organized by neighborhood parliaments, led by a few haggard C-Sec officers who had volunteered their off-duty hours, newly homeless citizens cleaned their own streets.

It was sweaty, thankless work - overwhelming in scale, numbing in practice. Mostly unsupervised, Garrus was left to pick through it all, forced to ignore anything he couldn't lift. For the recycling plants, he assembled ten-foot piles of scrap metal and eezo. He waded through jagged hull shavings as thick as his arm, recognizing the last remnants of the warships eviscerated by Soverign's Beam. He swept glass and rerouted stagnant water mains. He incinerated bags full of clothing and children's toys, already crunchy with ash. And he found bodies. So many bodies.

None of them were hers.

During the night cycle, when visibility was too low for recovery work, Garrus picked over the ruins and tried to find his apartment. He had lived on Kithoi for a decade and had been sifting wreckage for a week, but he still found it difficult to maintain his bearings. His customary landmark - the flashy, dirt-cheap jurum take-out place two blocks distal from his apartment complex - was now a circle of raw vacuum. Clean as a bullet, a plasma-hot shard of the Presidium had pierced through the heart of his old neighborhood and left behind a lacy, delicate ring of exposed strata. Beyond a thin sheet of transparent pressure shielding, the stars watched him. Bright and cruel and hungry, they glittered like teeth.

After several nights of fruitless exploration, Garrus was ducking under fallen girders on the promisingly familiar third story of a blown-out building. He stumbled through a slip of loose ash and his boot came down on something hollow, shattering it to pieces with a startling crack. Terrified that it was a skull, he hesitated to look.

But when he lifted his foot, all he found was a soot-black 1/144 replica of the Destiny Ascension.

He was home.

Only the vaguest top-down details remained, like an archaeologist's reconstruction propped over a burial mound. The superstructure lingered. A single wall had survived nearly untouched, the interior support between the bathroom and his bed. Everything else was heat-blasted beyond recognizability. The panels on his kitchen cabinets, once dingy but serviceable, now peeled back in rippling sheets. The street-facing walls were hardest hit of all, transformed into tortured fists of rebar clenched around shriveled black clumps of plasticite that had once been windows.

He entered slowly, unsure of the floor.

His boots crunched over plastic and glass, over the chewed-up remains of his furniture, his television, his data-pads, his desk. He watched a thin gray powder stir around his heels, making clear, dark footprints wherever he stepped, and realized he was walking through his own ashes. Ten years of his own life, gone.

The corner of his living room that had once been dedicated to a life-long modding hobby (an obsession his sister had dubbed unhealthy) was now a foul-smelling smudge. One quick glance told him that his carefully tended supply of oil-soaked lithium had caught fire and fueled what looked to have been a sizable inferno. As usual, Solana had been right, though he imagined this particular I-told-you-so would have given her little satisfaction.

All across the apartment, model ships were strewn in unrecognizable bits and pieces - a tragicomic miniature of the numerous tragedies outside. Years of careful collecting and affectionate assembly were in that graveyard. Gifts from his mother, his sister, friends from Cipritine that he hadn't spoken to in years. Each vessel thoughtfully assembled over long months - some had taken years. As a matter of principle, Garrus had been in the habit of cleaning the collection on a bi-monthly schedule, rotating the fleet through his spotless display cases, carefully mounting his favorites on plaques that he engraved himself.

There was only one he cared about now. The newest and cheapest, never even finished. Garrus dug through debris for a full half hour before he found the first recognizable piece of the Normandy: a three-inch fragment of her starboard hull. He tried to wipe the soot away with his thumb, to see if her colors were still intact, but the fragment crumbled through his fingers.

After that, he had little reason to stay. Desperate for anything salvageable, he made one final sweep. This time, he focused on the surviving bedroom wall, going straight for the built-in bedside storage. He wasn't hopeful, but maybe he'd left something in a drawer. An omni-tool, a data-pad. Something. Anything. He would walk out of here with a half-melted candy wrapper clenched in his fist, if that was all he had left.

Instead, what he found winded him like a fist to the keel.

There, in a mostly-empty drawer on level with what once had been his headrest, he found a pair of pristine Alliance dog tags. Paralyzed by the sight, chest on fire, he sucked in a breath and held it to the count of ten. A mistake, surely. She must have forgotten to take them with her, last time…

Mechanically, he reached into the drawer. Picked up the dog tags. Brought them closer.

He swallowed a sick flood of bile. On one side, Jane Shepard's name topped a short list, the insultingly dull bullet-points of a military life. Fighting the knot in his chest, Garrus turned the tags to the reverse face.

His heart stopped. No.

No accident. Shepard had left the tags in this drawer deliberately, had carefully arranged them like this in the hope of future discovery. A message. A promise. A confession. He knew all this for a fact - the evidence had just been seared into him forever like a sunspot in the back of his eye.

Before leaving these tags in his bedside drawer, Shepard had stolen two small bottles of enamel from his model kits and meticulously filled the stripes on her identical N7 insignia with hand-painted streaks.

One red, one blue.

The room swayed. For one gut-clenching moment, Garrus was convinced the building was about to topple. To steady himself, he pressed the cool tags against his forehead. Out of sight, out of mind. He tried to blink away the nausea, but the cold touch of Shepard's last message soaked through his plates like a soft kiss.

Blowing faintly through the dust of the room, he heard a small but terrible noise.

I love you.

A moment too late, he recognized that wretched, broken cry: his own voice.

Silencing himself, forcing down the scream in his throat, he brought the tags to his mouth and sucked in an involuntary, shuddering breath. Cold and chemical, the familiar metallic tang of fresh-set modeling paint filled his mouth, his nose.

With that, his final vestiges of structural integrity gave way. He hit the floor in broken stages: one knee, then the other, a hip, the heel of his hand.

Until his throat blistered and his eyes burned salt-raw, until the blood in his heart grew slow with cold, Garrus Vakarian crumpled into his life's very dust, and wept.


	5. 13 - Grace and Mordin

**#7 -** **Grace and Mordin  
** _routine kisses where the other person presents their cheek/forehead for the hello/goodbye kiss without even looking up from what they're doing_

(for lyricsaboutcats)

* * *

Shepard wakes up all at once with a jolt and a strangled yelp, choking in the black. Out of that startling darkness, a blinding light, as if a Collector beam has been aimed at her retinas. She thrashes until the glare disappears, then feels the too-soft embrace of her mattress.

A few things are immediately obvious: her hands are shaking, she's covered in sweat, and someone is sitting on the edge of her bed. The room drifts slowly into focus, a single puddle of dim orange light cast by an omni-tool. After a moment, Mordin manifests as the blurry silhouette the omni-tool is attached to.

"Like clockwork," he whispers, scanning the space around Shepard's temples. His voice is slower than usual, soft as the dark. "Right on schedule."

He's facing the head of the bed and dressed all in black, a liquid-tight sleep suit that is indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness. As he breaks his scan to smooth the hair from her face with strand-by-strand attention, she feels nurtured by a shadow.

She's too disoriented to ask what he's doing, but he's never been one to require prompting.

"Nightmare. Nightly. O-three-thirty, give or take… ten, twenty minutes. Adding to log. Tonight's subject: Collectors or Reapers?" Quieter, with a meaningful look into her face, he asks, "Destruction of SR-1?"

She blinks, coughing low in her throat to clear the night's dryness, unsure whether she considers this compassionate or creepy.

"None of the above." She finally moans, wiping her forehead. "There was this bug-eyed alien standing over my bed, shining a bright light into my eyes, saying he needed to probe me for science."

A peek in his direction assures her that he's smirking in his mad-scientist way, lopsided and disorienting, like some kind of funhouse mirror.

"Hmm. Troubling implications."

She adds: "He was singing Gilbert and Sullivan the whole time. It was terrifying."

Mordin's weight has sunk a small gravity well into the mattress, and Shepard's body has drifted toward him on pure physical impulse. Her stomach is mashed against his long thigh so tightly that his knee nudges her breastbone. She brings one arm across his lap and pulls him closer.

"Does this mean I'm crazy, doc?"

He resumes his quiet omni-tool scan near her temples, pitching his other arm like a tentpole on the far side of her waist. He leans over, shielding her in his not-quite embrace.

"Certainly," he whispers. His voice is right next to her ear, tiny and intentional, raising all the trigger hairs on her neck. "Stark raving. No cure."

She wraps sleepy arms around his waist and traps him in place. Enjoys the easy slide of his night-suit in her palms, the smooth curves of his ribs and spine revealed as her hands wander, lazy and greedy for his attention.

He continues scanning, but tips his head this way and that, offering his cheek, his neck, his forehead. She kisses him lightly at each designated point of attack, tightening her arms with every press of lips to skin. When she can endure his absence no longer, she drags him under the sheets to join her for the night, forcing him to disengage the scan. He tut-tuts, but returns her embrace all the same.

He gathers her into the hollow of his chest. Surrounds her with his cool, willowy limbs. Whispers against the top of her head. The words run together; vague, unimportant, absolute nonsense. A rote patter of proteins and amino acids, anything to get Shepard's mind to clear. After weeks sharing her bed, Mordin has an entire arsenal of meaningless lullabies. He deploys them with ever-increasing efficiency.

It only takes a few moments of his voice in her ear. Along her back, one hand traces the outlines of nerves, his fingers long and light. His other hand follows gentle, well-travelled paths through her hair. She drifts, drifts… disappearing into his arms.

In the morning, he activates the omni-tool once more before she wakes. Recording a rare moment for posterity.

Shepard smiles in her sleep.


	6. 14 - Grace and Mordin

**#19 -** **Grace and Mordin  
** _kisses meant to distract the other person from whatever they were intently doing_

(for anonymous)

* * *

Six months of silence. No word since her incarceration, not even a rumor. They'd never promised, never declared. She knew his limitations. Her own. No questions asked, there was work to be done. Her task: too honorable to ignore. His: too dangerous to share. They had mutually skirted and ignored, found alternatives, said goodbye.

It is only now, when he is one long step away, that Shepard finally misses him.

Buoying her is the memory of their reunion on Sur'Kesh. The slow, stunned slip of his eyes when he caught his first glimpse of her. The tremor in his grip when he took hold of her hand and squeezed, reluctant to let go.

Aboard the Normandy, Shepard waits for some sparse hint that Mordin's feelings have survived their long intermission, but he is newly impenetrable. He twitters at his work station in med-bay, singing a constant trill of hypotheses and solutions, more alive than she's ever seen him.

And more alone.

His work has changed. Grown exponentially in scope and meaning while leaving little room for anything else. The scientific breakthrough of a thousand lifetimes, all wrapped up in the glimmer of personal redemption. Gorgeous. Irresistible. Meant to be.

Mordin's brief and brilliant existence has honed him for this singular task. Shepard understands completely. Curing the genophage will be Mordin Solus' magnum opus - facing down the Reapers will be her own. Whatever grew between them while hunting the Collectors, it has no such grandeur.

Still, she struggles to put it aside.

She has exhausted every possible conversational excuse. Inquiring after Mordin's progress on the genophage yields moments only. They are both consumed now, the work of the apocalypse is never finished. Thin: these cheap scraps of time scavenged between them, the underfed silence of his back.

Quiet and watchful, unwilling to leave even if she is not needed, Shepard claims the empty bed across from Eve and abandons all pretense. She locks hands on knees and gives meditation a wild shot, soaking a long breath through her nose. Just one minute of nearness, then she can leave.

Maybe two.

Nearly ten minutes later, she remains immobile. Every second is a theft that she can feel. Minuscule grains leaking from a sack of sand, a burden that grows heavier as it empties. She stares at a splendid madman set loose on his masterwork and feels incomparably small.

"You spend a great deal of time here, Commander. Is curing the genophage truly so important to you?"

Shepard stiffens head-to-toe. Eve's quiet interruption has startled her heart into arrhythmia.

Shepard has been staring at Mordin for longer than is professionally excusable. Meanwhile, Eve has been staring at Shepard. Seeing everything. Possibly more than everything. The future and the past. The Commander's hidden interior. Shepard has an embarrassing jolt: she's become transparent.

She blames her negligence on the familiar white noise. The atmosphere of incorruptible purpose that Mordin carries behind him like a cold, clean wind. Caught in his weather, Shepard had let herself forget the obvious: Eve is calm company, easy to like, but she watches like a hawk.

"The genophage," Shepard blurts, throat dry. "Yes. Curing the genophage. It's very important to me."

Feeling her blood rise, Shepard slides her gaze to the krogan shaman. Eve has already turned her careful attention Mordin, who is waving his omni-tool at a row of sterile beakers, apparently oblivious.

"I can see what really matters to you," Eve mutters, almost inaudibly. "He can't."

Her voice is thick, but not unkind. After a moment, she stands and moves to Shepard's bedside with an expectant look in her eye.

Shepard's face tightens. A downward twitch of eyebrows, a thinning of lips, a blanching of skin.

She preps a full denial, but Eve's eyes are crinkled with humor, a secret grin hidden beneath her veil. There's no point pretending with her, she already knows.

Defeated, Shepard slumps forward so she can whisper to Eve on the margins of the bed. It feels girlish and stupid, and very nearly like relief. To her surprise, Eve steps closer and puts one of her huge, heavy hands over Shepard's shoulder.

Shepard keeps her voice low. Between krogan hearing and Shepard's cybernetics, they require little more than well-annunciated gusts of air.

"We have… history. But things are different now."

"What changed? You or him?"

Shepard laughs bitterly. "The universe. The stakes. A fight on this scale, there's no room for error… We can't ignore the big picture."

"All the more reason. The big picture is all around us." Eve inclines her head towards Mordin with a grunt."The only hope for my people is standing right there, talking to himself like a lunatic. By his own species' standards, he's a teetering relic. He's been here for the last thirty-six hours, no food, no sleep. If he makes one wrong calculation, there's no cure, no krogan help for the turians, no winning against the Reapers…"

Eve leans closer, then startles Shepard with a wink.

"If someone doesn't make him shut up and rest for an hour or two, he might keel over any minute. He'll die right in the middle of a song."

Biting through a small grin, Shepard admits: "Yeah. Sounds like Mordin."

Eve's hand tightens on Shepard's shoulder.

"Are you the same Commander Shepard that humanity keeps bragging about?"

Shepard squints, unsure.

"If you are that singular woman…" Eve looks back at Mordin, sizing him up. "He's just a puny salarian. I don't see what you're so afraid of. Just sling him over your shoulder and run."

Shepard's face cracks into a smile so rare that her face aches. She warns: "He's more dangerous than he looks."

Eve gifts Shepard a meaningful look. "He'd have to be, to earn your attention."

There is a pause while Eve allows Shepard a moment's absorption, then the krogan claps Shepard's back and pushes her off the bed. She mimes throwing a puny salarian over her shoulder and shoves Shepard toward the Professor.

"I'm going for a walk," Eve declares, throwing her voice with enough force that Mordin freezes mid-pour. He looks up from the latest batch of test samples to give his professional opinion.

"Good idea," he agrees, nodding. "Stretch legs. Invigorate circulation. Get snack, high protein content preferable. Hear Lieutenant Vega capable with egg-based dishes. Worth trying."

"That's debatable," Shepard groans, shooting Eve a warning glance. "Vega's love for the frying pan is based mostly on nostalgia, not practice."

At the sound of Shepard's casual drawl, Mordin turns. He seems to observe the Commander in entirety, his glance at once comprehending and complete. She realizes how stupid it was to assume he hadn't overheard every word of Shepard's conversation with the shaman. You can take the salarian out of the STG...

Eve says nothing more. She gives Shepard one last helpful nod, then walks out.

Mordin stares at Shepard, unwavering. A wide black glance she remembers all too well. He pierces clean through skin and bones, revealing the smoke and mirrors beneath.

"Grace. Stay a moment?"

Instantly, she feels dangerously unoccupied.

Panicking, she invents an injury to nurse. A week past due, a full set of fractured knuckles she'd earned punching a Cerberus thug who got too close. The bones are well set, bruises faded and yellow. Unworthy of attention, but she decides now is a perfect time to apply more medi-gel and tape.

She hurries to Chakwas' unoccupied desk, then rummages through the CMO's stash. Finding a box of field dressings, Shepard flops into the rolling chair. She skids six inches across the floor, spilling half of the box into her lap. A roll of gauze tape falls to the floor and giddily rolls across the room like a confrontation-seeking missile. Mordin observes its wild approach, allows it to bop into his foot, then bends to pick it up.

While he's distracted, Shepard squirts medi-gel onto her right hand. She smears it in random whorls, barely remembering where the original injuries had been. She digs for another roll of tape, using her remaining clean fingers while awkwardly holding the goopy ones out of the way. Her blurred reflection stares out from the bottom of the aluminum box, heart pumping so furiously that her own pulse is deafening.

A shadow falls over her lap, then she feels the naked weight of Mordin's hand on her neck. He's taken off his gauntlets.

She turns just enough to catch a glimpse of the rescued tape in Mordin's other hand. Without a word, she snatches the roll and pulls a length of tape with her teeth. She tries to wrap her hand with it, but the tape slides through the medi-gel and sticks only to itself. Soon, there is a tangled mess, limp with wet. She tears it to pieces and starts over.

Mordin's hand is still there. Warm and heavy, his touch moves into her hair. Deliberately, he drags his fingers through the downy growth at the base of her skull, outlining the origin of her spine. She shudders, losing her last shreds of concentration, and feels gooseflesh rising on every inch of skin. She rips off another ruined length of tape. Starts over.

The shadow grows darker as he moves closer, threatening to envelop her. He bends, inhaling the scent of unwashed hair with a shivering breath. His warm hand tightens on her neck, the first unconscious reflex he has allowed since his instant of reunited disbelief on Sur'Kesh.

He makes a sound she can't categorize, like an inverted sigh of relief, then presses his lips into her hair.

She tries a third time, pulling another length of tape and trying to wrap her knuckles. But she can't think. Can't even count her own fingers. Mordin goes for her temple next, a firm shove of mouth to skull, trying to force some of his madness into her. She keeps wrapping, struggling to believe...

"Would prefer retiring to your quarters," he whispers, tones narrowing as he moves closer. He breathes into her ear, forcing her into a full-body shiver so absolute it is almost a cringe.

"Waited for invitation. Feared affection may be waning. Six months… long time. Long distance. Human beings often cannot sustain courtship emotions."

She freezes.

"Courtship emotions?" Spell broken, she turns to glare at him.

Finds she has run straight into his trap, staring into a smile as wide as it is manic.

She splutters. "You're the one who-" He captures her head in both hands, silencing her.

A sharp inhale, then he kisses her forehead. The dense pressure of his lips, warm and dry, becomes her world entire. Shepard closes her eyes and sees an undiscovered color. The stain of his heart, scattered with stars.


	7. 17 - Sara and Kallo

**#14 - Sara and Kallo**  
 _starting with a kiss meant to be gentle, ending up in passion_

(for anonymous)

* * *

It's getting worse. All of it.

First, the sticky fingers. With Lexi's help, Kallo masters control of his nuptial pads in the span of a few concentrated hours. He is able to resume his duties at the helm with no one the wiser.

The next morning when Suvi walks onto the bridge with her coffee, she telegraphs Kallo a friendly side-eye and asks about Ryder, but gives up when her third attempt at casual chatter meets a wall of silence. He almost feels bad about it. Almost.

No use spreading rumors. There's nothing to spread. Nothing is going to happen. He's not about to mire the Pathfinder in a swamp of uncomfortable biological inconveniences. She has much more important things to worry about. Rebuilding civilization takes precedence over the alarming and foreign developments in Kallo's crotch.

Salarian mating season: even he doesn't want any part of it.

The season should last four weeks at least, eight at most. Hard to say. A few months of hell before Kallo can get back to normal. Lexi forwards more information than he knows what to do with. Terabytes of pamphlets and diagrams, one worrying link to a discreet manufacturer of plastic sheeting and other "interspecies play aides," terrifying videos of adventurous (and well-compensated) asari maidens splashing around in pools with salarian partners.

Kallo can't even make it past the video thumbnails, can barely look at those e-mails at all except to freeze in surprise and spend a few brief seconds obsessing over Sara's body instead of his own. What she might really look like under all that pretense, the scuffed leather and showy grins…

He avoids the terminals after that. _No._ Thank you, but no. Too confusing.

So, he gets his hands back under control. Fabulous. Also, fruitless. Hours after that victory, his body begins to itch.

Everywhere, every inch of skin alive with pain as if Kallo is due for a terrifying biannual molt. He's not, Lexi reassures him. His body is just flooding with hormones that are readjusting his natural excretions, he might notice some flare-ups. Nothing to worry about, the doctor coddles, Kallo is only preparing to transform from the outside-in, apparently.

Somehow that thought is less comforting than the somewhat more relatable prospect of shedding his epidermis whole like a snake.

So, he showers. Constantly. Sometimes twice a day, alternating hot and cold. Blessedly, the itching stops.

But then, _of course,_ along comes something worse. His skin begins to… seep. Moisture beads out of every pore, covering him in something clear and slick and flavorless. He'd prefer not to call this newest development _lubricant_ like Lexi does with a clarity and ease he refuses to understand, but he can't seem to find a better name for it either.

One afternoon while Ryder is off punching lowlifes in Kadara port, Kallo paces across the galaxy map station, desperate for an occupation. Uncharacteristically out of his seat, standing because he can't bear the pornographic mess that now constantly lines his suit, he grimaces and rubs his fingers together. He evaluates the ease of the slip.

Dammit, it's lube. It's _definitely_ lube.

"You have the bridge, Suvi. I'm going to take a long shower," he announces, bolting for the door.

Suvi jumps. As Kallo sprints aft, she turns to watch his retreat.

"Now? Right now?"

"Yes, right now!"

The doors close over her baffled reply and Kallo throws himself down the port crew ladder, rungs forgotten. He comes to a hard stop at the lower deck and realizes his hands have left a smear on the flawless chrome side rails. He yelps, staring at his palms with accusatory horror, then charges into the shower.

The shower, which is occupied.

By Ryder.

To her credit, Ryder barely flinches, but her face does look plenty startled. She's not naked, which is a small miracle, but she's close enough. Only a damp towel between Kallo's imagination and the hair-covered madness of human anatomy. One of her legs is up on the waterproof bench outside the communal shower stall, and she's picking at a bright red rash that covers a quarter of her calf.

"You. Kadara. On. Kadara. There. Kadara. Punching."

Ryder stares at him, blinking with the slow awe of a sunbathing lizard.

Unforgivably, he doesn't leave immediately. He can't tear his eyes from the glittering hollow at the base of her neck. Why is she here? Oh just leave. He can't leave. Her hair is wet. The room smells like her. The soaps she uses, Ryder's signatures, invisible and private. He'd never realized it before. Of course, it's the soap. Stop panicking. Leave. _Leave._

She takes in a deep breath, apparently on his behalf as well as her own, then slowly says,

"I got some of that local hell water in my suit. Hurt like a bitch, so I called off the rest of the scouting. I needed a break from that place, a nice long shower. I told you that twenty minutes ago when I cleared decon…"

"You… did?"

He can't remember, which fills him with terror like he's never felt.

He should say something. Now. Explain. He wrings his slippery hands, wishing they were sticky again. Wishing any single part of his body would pick a setting and stay there for longer than half a day.

"Kallo, are you okay?"

She doesn't touch him, she's too polite, but there's something in her posture that warns she'd prefer to be touching him if given the chance. Would that be so bad? Probably. Should he leave? Definitely. Yes definitely, he should leave. Why isn't he leaving?

Sara, fiddling with the top edge of her towel, which has loosened and drooped dangerously down her chest.

Sara, her hair pearled with moisture that drips to her shoulders in tiny droplets that Kallo can't help but follow with his eyes.

Sara, staring up at him with her quiet, parted lips, the rock in her throat bobbing as she swallows nervously beneath his unblinking scrutiny.

Sara, suddenly closer, moving her face into his hand when some rogue internal force compels him to step further into a room he should be fleeing from and touch his fingers to her cheek.

"Your hand is wet," she says, pushing herself further into his grip. No. Away. Move away.

"Sorry," he breathes, forgetting other words like _weird_ and _foolish_ and _mayday._

She asks carefully, "Did you need something from me?"

He feels his head slowly shaking back and forth _no_ , though he can't remember any such impulse leaving his brain.

She inches closer and rephrases.

"Do you _want_ something from me?"

He stands there, unable to move forward or back, his only movement the slow horizontal surrendering of his head.

"Well fine," she gripes. "Be stubborn about it. I want something from you,"

Slow enough to grant him an easy escape, she brings her lips to his.

He's never kissed anyone before. He thinks the event is strangely uneventful, considering all the fuss people make over it.

But, still…

Sara's lips are pillowy, moistened by the sweat of the shower, and almost painfully warm. Her skin smells distinctly clean, like something uniquely expensive and well cultivated. He thinks of the hydroponics bay on the _Nexus,_ then thinks he shouldn't be thinking about that at all, then thinks he's thinking too much to be any good at this and that he should probably stop.

She presses her face against his for a few quiet moments, her lips tightly closed, keeping herself still and careful. After a long pause, she tries to pull away.

She tries and fails: Kallo follows her when she retreats. He follows her so thoroughly that they wind up backed into the shower stall, forehead to forehead, mouth to mouth, arms in a tangle. When Sara's back meets the wall, she breaks away to catch her breath.

He can't stop staring at her mouth, the mouth that has just kissed him, the mouth of Sara Ryder, the woman he inexplicably wants to kiss again.

His hand finds her cheek once more, and his thumb trails toward her lips. He stares, enraptured by the automatic certainty of his own movements. A trail of glistening lubricant, _his lubricant,_ tattooing her face with an indecent mystery streak.

He shudders with disgust or fascination or something newer and more terrifying than both. In one halting breath, he sweeps his thumb over her lips, spreading the moisture across her mouth.

Without warning her tongue darts out, all pink curiosity. He watches her take a sample into her mouth, bold and foolhardy as ever. His fingers tighten on her face and his thumb drags forcefully along her bottom lip, smearing in wider, harder strokes.

Stupid, the both of them. What if he's excreting poison? Does he care? Does she care? Lexi would have warned him if he was going to excrete poison.

Maybe.

Sara's eyelids droop with intoxication, but she doesn't choke or die. She bites her lip, grazing the tip of his thumb in the process.

He's wondering when his legs got so shaky. Have they always been this shaky? Sara holds him up, wrapping her arms around his waist and yanking him closer.

He closes what little gap remains, crashing into her open mouth. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do with his tongue - if he's even allowed to use it at all - but he knows he wants to explore the alien sweetness of her, a naked flavor newly salted with his own. In the end it's little more than a benign mix of spit and skin.

But the _feel_ of her mouth, lubricated and slippery. The press of her tongue. The scrape of her teeth biting his lower lip. The sound when she whines and nudges their hips together.

 _That…_ That is something else.

He drags his greased hands along her face, her neck, the wild territory of upper chest that peeks out above her towel. Her skin grows slicker with each grope, and the more freely she slides against him, the more excited she seems to get. He seems to get. They're both very excited, and everything is slippery. He's never been this excited.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's the excitement itself that is different.

Different, he decides, might not be entirely terrifying. At least with Sara.


End file.
